1) Field of the Invention
This invention relates to food serving utensils, and more particularly, food utensils for use with food buffets.
2) Description of the Prior Art
During the past twenty years, Americans have seen the increase of both spouses entering the work force. This has resulted in an increase in spendable income for the family. This increase in income permits the family to enjoy such luxuries as two cars, color televisions and luxurious vacations. Also, Americans, in general, are spending more time away from home for both work and pleasure. As a result, more people are eating their meals in restaurants.
Buffets are one of the most popular forms of restaurants. Buffets typically include many different types of appetizers, salads, entrees and desserts placed in food trays along a buffet table.
Spoons or forks are generally provided with each buffet dish. The customer or patron uses the utensils to remove as much food as he or she desires from the buffet dish onto their plate and then places the utensils back into the buffet dish. The patron continues this process throughout the buffet table, and then goes to his or her seat to eat the food using food utensils provided by the restaurant.
Sanitation has always been a concern of buffet restaurant owners, as well as the restaurant customers. Restaurant owners are well aware of the economical and devastating effect that results from an outbreak of food poisoning in a restaurant.
Great progress has been made in mandating the supervision of food preparation and employees' personal hygiene within the restaurant industry in order to safeguard the future of the dining out segment of the food service industry. However, this is not good enough, since customer cross-contamination is also possible in the buffet environment by various customers using the same buffet food utensils and breathing onto the buffet food.
The food service industry specifically addressed the latter concern by including buffet sneeze guards over the buffet tables (see for example, Applicant's U.S. Design Pat. No. 186,927). However, the cross-contamination of customers has never been addressed. It is known that Streptococcal, E.Coli and Staph bacteria congregate on human hands and may be passed among customers using the same utensils. Also, Hepatitis A may likewise be passed among customers in the same manner. Furthermore, the bacteria and virus also can contact the food, thereby contaminating the food.
To overcome this cross-contamination problem, it has been proposed to issue disposable gloves to buffet customers. However, use of such gloves has been rejected for several reasons, namely: (1) the patron's resentment of the inference that they have unclean hands; (2) the unwillingness of the patron to wear disposable gloves; (3) the inconvenience of putting on and removing the gloves while holding a plate of food, plus the awkward appearance of everyone wearing gloves; and (4) the gloves are easily contaminated by touching other items, thereby giving the wearer a false sense of security.
It has also been suggested that the patron be issued his or her own utensils for use only with the buffet dishes. However, this would require an inordinate number of serving utensils and is, therefore, not practical. Likewise, it has been suggested that a sanitation box be provided for use with the buffet utensils before removing food from the buffet dishes. This too is impractical and would be tremendously confusing to the customer.
Therefore, it is an object of my invention to provide a simple, effective, efficient, aesthetically pleasing and inexpensive solution to prevent customer cross-contamination of buffet utensils.